Vendor Spotlight: Dependable Technology Bridges ... Davidson Partnership Saves Hospitals from Drowning in the Sea of Unreliable Infrastructure

By: Bill Wellman, Principal, The Davidson Partnership, LLC

The Challenge:

In the era of advanced clinical information systems, infrastructure is essential. Without a reliable infrastructure, the clinical systems required to provide safe, quality patient care won’t work. Nursing documentation, CPOE, EMR, EDM and other applications require a fast infrastructure or clinical professionals won’t embrace these applications. When applications aren’t available, clinicians can’t provide the best care for patients. When applications are slow, clinicians find workarounds, some of which are questionable or unsafe. The longer systems are slow or unavailable, the louder the voice of the clinical community. In the most extreme situations, the clinical community alleges the systems are unsafe and will eventually cause patient harm. The MEDITECH applications are proven and tested, but to work effectively they need an equally high quality infrastructure (devices, networks, wireless, servers, etc.). With the variety of technologies from different vendors that must be implemented to create a working system, it is easy to understand why achieving fast reliable performance is challenging.

Design is the key to a reliable infrastructure. Lack of redundancy and aging servers, desktops and network devices present an additional set of challenges. Medical Device vendors under FDA regulation often run outdated versions of operating systems and virus protection software, arguing they can’t make changes without appropriate FDA approval. This outdated software can become infected with viruses that spread to other hospital systems. These issues are often compounded by the need to deploy without creating downtime. Effective design can mitigate risk associated with these issues.

The Davidson Partnership, LLC can bridge the gap between MEDITECH and the diverse infrastructure technologies required to make it work. Through years of project experience in diverse environments we’ve acquired the knowledge needed to fit MEDITECH and infrastructure architectures together in a workable solution capable of providing the performance your clinical professionals deserve and expect.

Davidson Partnership Can Help:

One of the greatest challenges for information systems leaders is buying the right technology to do the right job in the organization. The right technology works both today and well into the future. It doesn’t become obsolete before it’s deployed in the hospital. Unfortunately, in the rapid paced healthcare IT environment, we’ve seen vendors sell technology that they subsequently sunset within months of when it arrived at the hospital. In other cases we’ve seen software and hardware delivered that has significant issues with the current version of MEDITECH the hospital is running. Hospitals have invested a lot of resources in trying to make the technology work, only to have the technology vendor eventually admit that a known bug exists and their technical staff is working on fixing it.

We can help hospitals avoid these problems. Our experience enables us to ask the right questions. We can assist hospitals in testing new technology to ensure appropriate interoperability. Our systematic approach of evaluating, selecting, testing and implementing technologies with great attention to detail, helps our clients eliminate risk and improve reliability.

Our Approach:

We utilize a systematic technology evaluation and acquisition approach to ensure organizations acquire and implement the right technology. Our approach encompasses four levels of technology assessment:

• Compatibility Analysis
• Usability Analysis
• Future State Scenario Planning
• Targeted Proof of Concept

In the compatibility analysis, we review the testing performed by the vendor in environments similar to the one that exists in your organization today. We also look for comparable sites that have implemented the product and are using it in production. We evaluate these environments to determine the extent to which the technology has been demonstrated to integrate with technologies present in your environment.

Usability focuses on the extent to which the technology functions in an acceptable manner for a variety of individuals in their daily work. If the technology doesn’t function in an acceptable manner, these individuals often utilize work-arounds that introduce inefficiencies, introduce errors, or may simply be unsafe. Our usability analysis seeks to identify aspects of the technology that are working and those that aren’t working in similar environments.

Most healthcare organizations have a technology roadmap that is guiding their future technology investments. This roadmap should be aligned with the organization’s clinical/ business strategy. Our future state scenario planning looks at the portfolio of technologies an organization will be using in the future and seeks to assess the extent to which the technologies under consideration will be compatible with the future technologies.

After our analysis is complete, we develop a picture of the high risk areas. Based upon this risk analysis, we design a proof of concept that focuses on high risk areas in an effort to eliminate these risks. Vendor contracts can then be negotiated contingent upon successful completion of the proof of concept.

Our methodology reduces the risk that technologies will not operate together harmoniously in the hospitals production environment.

Technology Bridges:

As organizations work to integrate applications and information technologies, they often identify “gaps” between the different vendor products and MEDITECH. Sometimes the technology doesn’t work as advertised. These “gaps” often require organizations to create elaborate work-arounds that allow the technologies to interoperate. For example, the MEDITECH Materials Management (MM) module isn’t easy for a mobile Materials Management professional to work with. The mobile professionals need a mobile device that allows them to quickly inventory exchange carts. As we looked at this problem, we created a technology bridge, MediStock, that runs on any hand-held or desktop device that runs a web browser. The application operates over the hospitals existing wireless network, allowing information to be collected on the device and automatically transmitted to a server where the information is then uploaded to the MEDITECH MM module.

As hospitals migrate to new applications, important data is sometimes left stranded in the old application as there is no place to store it within the new application, or the data definitions are completely different (incompatible meta-data). We often find this situation when helping hospitals with their conversions. A related situation arises when hospitals wish to retire an outdated system that is only being used to store data that is no longer being updated. Maintenance costs continue to increase for what has become a legacy data storage warehouse. As we looked at this gap, we created a technology bridge, MediView, that functions as a low-cost storage and retrieval system for the legacy data. MediView can also be used in conversions to house data that can’t be migrated to the new application. Organizations often find the reduction in maintenance costs for the legacy system can yield a savings in as little as 12–18 months.

One of Davidson Partnership’s core competencies is the design and construction of innovative bridges that enable hospitals to improve their performance and enhance patient safety.

Ensuring Success:

Let The Davidson Partnership assist you in reducing risk, improving infrastructure reliability, and enhancing the success of your implementation. For further information, please contact us at sales@davidsonpartnership.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call Jen Fortin, VP of Sales, at 603-890-8530.

Open Invitation:

If you have an infrastructure challenge we would welcome hearing from you. If you would like to join one of our MediStock or MediView webinars, please contact us at sales@davidsonpartnership.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . We have regularly scheduled sessions and would welcome your participation.

Bill Wellman is a Principal with The Davidson Partnership LLC, with over 25 years of experience in health care information systems management, consulting and education. Prior to joining Davidson Partnership he was a Vice President with First Consulting Group, and has functioned as the Information Systems Executive for several healthcare organizations. Bill currently holds an adjunct faculty appointment at Harvard University, and has also been as a faculty member for Rush University and for JCAHO. Bill has served on numerous boards including being a founding board member of Status One, a leading high-risk patient management firm. He is a Past President of the Boston Chapter of the Society for Information Management. Bill holds a Bachelors degree in Social Science from Michigan State University and a Masters in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan.